![]()
The Alexanders are Alex Metric and Yuksek (Pierre-Alexandre to his friends), two of dance music’s brightest talents, and Easter sees their new collaboration launch in earnest with a set of four gigs across the UK for Scandalism. No strangers to the night, having both played for Andy Peyton’s party numerous times over its last few years, the pair are only freshly-minted musical partners, but their work’s already produced a hit single, ‘Don’t Miss,’ on Yuksek’s own Partyfine label. Pulse caught them between gigs in France recently, to talk collaboration in the Internet age, musical chemistry, and the prospect of a long weekend in a tour bus.
You’re ready to hit the Easter weekend with a quartet of gigs around the UK for the Scandalism tour, in Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Nottingham. That’s a hefty schedule. How will you be preparing? By getting down the gym, meditation? Alex Metric: Well, we actually did our first ever DJ set as the Alexanders on 22nd March in Nantes, and we did the second one on the 29th in Reims. So that’s our preparation really! The promoter actually said to me, “How long have you been DJing together?” and I said, “This is the first one.” [laughs]. So it’s been good to have some preparation shows before we go full swing into the long tour.
What can we expect from the nights? You’re feeling your way in that respect, but do you have any plan at all, or are these first shows a way to just get used to it and work out that dynamic? A: Absolutely. We didn’t plan at all before the first show. I think with DJing back to back and with making music, you kind of feed off each other. I think it’s good to go in with no plan, as you react to the room and you get to feel what works and what doesn’t. By the time we get to London, we’ll have it a bit more honed. But still, you know, it’ll be off the cuff, and we’ll be improvising and figuring it out as we go along.
But that’s what playing back to back is about, as a pair, responding to what the other guy’s doing. A: We found it really fun, as both of us have DJed for so many years on our own, and having someone else onstage with us, it really doubles the fun and halves the workload, you know! [laughs]
You’re a veteran [Alex] for Scandalism, having played a hatful of dates for them. Is being part of that family and that promotion a nice feeling of comfort as a DJ with this tour coming up? A: Absolutely. It’s going to be great fun going on tour with the gang. I think Andy’s coming, and Mighty Mouse will be there too. And starting off at the Nest is perfect, as well because me and Pierre have both played there so many times, so it’s going to be like going home, doing a show on very familiar ground, so it’s a great way to start the tour. It’s going to be a wicked bunch of people to go on the road with.
I’m sure it’ll be a quiet, restrained affair. A: We’ve got a tour bus actually, for four days, so we’re all clambering on the bus and travelling around England, so it’s going to be great.
That should be a beautiful place by Monday! A: [laughs] Yeah, the thing is though, four days isn’t that long in a way, so we can afford to go pretty hard and have a lot of fun, and by the end of that four days we’ll have probably done about two weeks drinking!
You’re both so familiar personally with The Nest and XOYO. They’re two quite different clubs, at least layout and size wise, so do each give you a different DJing experience between the two? Yuksek: No, not really. The Nest is more sweaty more smoky and bassy, but XOYO is quite bouncing as well, and for me as a French stupid guy [laughs], it still feels like maybe just another good UK, London, party place…
A: I think the crowds are actually pretty similar at both. They’re part of the same family of clubs, and promoted to similar crowds, and I feel there’s nothing I could play at XOYO that I couldn’t play at the Nest and vice-versa. Especially as people come to see us, to they’re ‘our’ crowds in some respects, and I feel just as comfortable playing in either to be honest.
As you said at the start, the Alexanders is a very fresh project. Had you met each other before the project started, or was it this meeting of minds the first time and thought, “Maybe this could work?” A: We’d known each other over the Internet for a while, but we’d never actually met. Pierre came to London and came to my studio and we spent a couple of hours chatting. We started a tune but didn’t really finish it, and then maybe two months later I came to France and our first proper studio session gave birth to ‘Don’t Miss,’ so we’ve really got to know each other as The Alexanders has gone on, rather than before.
As you said, that’s a pretty early piece of work and as a single it’s been hugely successful. Was that a surprise at all, not in the sense that you doubted your own work, but I suppose working together you may not always click that early? A: I think the fun thing about doing this is that there has been no expectation and nothing beyond having fun with it. So the fact that it’s became successful and people dug it is a nice surprise. We never really thought beyond making a tune we wanted to make and putting it out on Pierre’s label, so there’s no pressure on this Alexanders thing. It’s nice to have that balance to working on your solo stuff and the pressure and being precious over it, whereas with this, as long as it’s fun and as long as we enjoy doing it then we’ll keep doing it.
And you’re working on a follow-up now. Is this just a record-by-record plan to just see what happens? A: Well, there is no grand plan at the moment. We’re going to make another one, and do some shows, and if this is as successful as the last one, then we’ll make another one. And who knows? Whatever form it takes in the future so be it. We just make some music for our enjoyment that we can play in the Alexanders sets, and our own as well.
Both of you are no strangers to collaborations in the past, but with the Alexanders in mind, how do these things come together? How does each of you come to the conclusion of who you want to make music with? Or is it just chance? Y: For me with Alex, many people that I’ve met in London, like guys that have come to the shows, had said that he was very similar to me in the way that I do music, and the way I behave. And on top of respecting Alex’s work, I thought it was fun to smeet, as we were so ‘close’ in the way we are.
A: I think that’s the thing. We’ve noticed that by DJing together. And when we did our mixtape, it’s really easy as we both have very similar tastes. Pierre sent me a load of tracks he’d been playing out, and I sent him a load of tracks, and they was so much crossover in there, and a lot of them were the same records. It makes the DJing side of it a lot easier. As for it being chance, I think you get drawn towards people. Everyone I’ve ever collaborated with, I’ve done it because I like their music or we’re friends. It’s not a random thing. With me and Pierre, it was mutual friends, and the same likes and tastes, and it just went forward from there.
How does that work aligning the diaries? Or does it tend to just fall into place depending on where you are? A: Exactly that. With people like Oliver, I work with him when I’m in LA. So it’s a geographical thing. And then me and Pierre, it happened at a moment when I’d just finished a lot of touring and Pierre had some downtime to make a compilation for Partyfine, and our diaries just sort of met in the middle. We wanted to have some new Alexanders music to play while we were on tour, so it made sense to get something done now. And we want to move quickly with it as well, because a lot of solo stuff, especially when you work with bigger labels, the time between working on a record and putting it out can be massive. You can wait six months to a year for something to come out, so I think the good thing about this, as Pierre has his label, we can make something and put it out pretty quickly, so we really enjoy that part of the process as well. It’s really exciting as an artist to see an instant reaction to something you’d made weeks before. We can make it and get going straight away.
Obviously you two come from different backgrounds in music. Pierre’s a classically trained musician, and Alex, your background is more from electronic music. How does that work in the studio together? Does that have a bearing on the methods or your roles in the studio? A: I don’t think it’s that pre-meditated, but then the track we did recently, Pierre played some great chords and I started chopping them up and messing around with them. I guess Pierre came at it from a more musical place, but then I’ve played keys on the tracks so there’s no real set rules to it, so whatever works in the moment we run with it.
You’ve also both done live stuff in the past. Would there ever be a live element to it, or even a full band? Or is it so far in the murky future that you just don’t know at this stage? A: I can pretty much safely say we’d never do a live band [laughs]. Maybe we’d do a two-man thing. But never a band!
Y: We were talking about [doing a live show] a few days ago. Maybe if we keep doing cool stuff and people want to see Alex and me, then maybe we could do a live DJ set, with a drum machine and some keyboards. Like the guys from Underground Resistance do, you know? This kind of crossover between DJing and Live.
A: We have both done bands and taken groups of people on the road with us. It’s good fun doing a band, [but] it’s very expensive. I stopped doing my band when I realised I can DJ and still get as much out of it as taking five people on the road. But definitely, like Pierre said, if there’s a demand for it, never say never.
And with two pairs of hands you can surely be a bit more creative and attack it differently than when you’d be doing it on your own. A: I enjoy collaborating a lot more than working on my own at the moment. It’s just nice to get out of your routine and the same methods of making a track. As I said about DJing, it’s half the workload and double the fun. We both really, really enjoyed the first shows, and so if we can continue that, then that’s great. This is just a fun sideline, but by not having any pressure or expectation on it, who knows where it will go? I think I’d be disappointed if we didn’t put out another couple of tunes this year at least.
The Alexanders are playing The Nest in London, The Market Bar in Nottingham, Gorilla in Manchester and Cabaret Voltaire in Edinburgh over the Easter weekend from 17th to 20th April. For full details, head to the Facebook event page and http://www.ilovethenest.com/events/SCANDALISM-UK-TO/index.html.
Listen to Pulse Radio.
